Schools: Fresh scandal embroils US climate science debate

By staff and wire services reports

February 23rd, 2012

A fresh scandal over climate change has erupted in the United States after leaked documents appeared to show a right-wing funded campaign to influence how climate science is taught in schools, the AFP reports. The internal budget and strategy documents from a Chicago-based non-profit group called the Heartland Institute were made public last week, and showed $200,000 was to be spent on a “global warming curriculum project.” The project would teach that “whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy” and that climate models’ “reliability is controversial,” according to some of the leaked documents. Others showed hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from fossil fuel industries and interests, an anonymous donor’s pledge of $1.25 million, and $300,000 to be paid to a team of scientists to rebut UN findings on climate change…